Touch - The Continuum Concept

Doug Wilms's research indicates that the core issue for parents is to communicate well with their children so that a strong empathic bond is created. The two critical communication pathways are conversation - we have looked a little at this already. The other is touch. My brother in law Barclay has recommended that I read his bible that focuses on touch and on drawing on the most traditional methods of child raising - The Continuum Concept.

At the heart of Liedloff's thinking is that we have been raising children for nearly 4 million years and most tribal societies have a set of common sense rules about parenting in place that we seem to have either forgotten or dismissed. Barclay has taken many of these rules to heart and is very pleased with the result - by the way so are we his children are a joy to be with. I have just got my copy and cannot comment personally on it yet but will next week. What about you? Have you read this book?

Here is a review and a link

Possibly the only parenting book you will ever need, September 23, 2003
Reviewer: A reader from Bronx, NY United States
While pregnant with my first child, I had the extraordinary good fortune of running across the Continuum Concept on a shelf at the public library. Initially, I was skeptical about the seemingly extreme, inflexible advice. And ever since, I've felt a little embarrassed about associating myself with Liedloff's anthropological approach. I'm sympathetic to criticisms along these lines.

However, The Continuum Concept is neither a parenting book nor a work of scholarship. Its power lies outside the details of the advice and the anthropology. Liedloff's narrative introduces the possibility of finding within radical difference a new freedom to act in and to interpret our own lives. This in itself is worth reading for, even if you go on to decide, say, that early body contact is not a major factor in human happiness.

For parents, the Continuum Concept also has unique practical value. To my knowledge, Liedloff is the only writer to clearly articulate the idea that physical contact (carrying, nursing) with minimal direct attention (e.g. eye contact, bouncing, focusing on baby while suspending other activities) -- the opposite of the more familiar western pattern of a mother cooing at a baby who is lying in a car seat or bassinet -- is the ideal way of meeting the needs of a young baby. Liedloff's ideas about energy discharge and the sturdiness of the newborn also amount to a practical possibility most western parents would neither witness nor hear about anywhere else. Certainly, Liedloff's view that parents' adult life can and should go on relatively unimpeded (without neglect!) in the presence of children of all ages is almost unheard of in a culture that often imagines difficulty and sacrifice as normative ideals for parenting.

Now that my daughter is almost 2, I am very grateful for both the interpretive framework and the simple but rare practical principles that have made our life together so smooth and joyful, and by extension, continue to deepen my understanding of what it means to live in family, in community, and in my own body.